Monday, November 22, 2010

Opinion of obtrucation...

Today we remember...Twenty years ago Margaret Thatcher resigned** as Tory leader. Thatcher is the only woman to have been Leader of the Conservative Party but more importantly the only woman to serve as Prime Minister of the UK, something she did for longer than anyone since 1827 (consecutively). Nice touch with videos etc HERE from Tim at Conservative Home.

** Worth remembering she wasn't kicked out as everyone likes to 'recall'; she resigned after failing to win the first ballot outright...haha you might say but she slaughtered the opposition getting nearly 54% of the vote (see details), however new rules stated that the winner must win by a clear 15% margin from the nearest rival; she missed this target by only 6 votes, not six percent...six votes...and there were 6 abstentions and 17 spoiled/void ballots. Imagine had she won: probably - although by no means certain - she would have lost in 1992 to Labour and Kinnock: no Major, no "1997 landslide" (it wasn't by the way), no Blair years, no Brown years. IMAGINE! Heseltine and Co have a lot to answer for; maybe their heads should be on the spikes next to Blair's and Brown's.

4 comments:

No, not at all, nothing wrong with a bit of passion and enthusiasm. I think the leap from Mrs T to no Blair years is stretching it a bit far, the really sad thing about the Blair years was that he didn't, beyond the removal of Clause 4, go far enough in his vision of the third way and ended up being compromised. I don't think Mrs T ever let herself be compromised, even when she was wrong she managed to convince those around her she was right.

She did say one thing that will always stick with me, when she was being criticised for being too strong, for being the 'iron lady', she asked something like, "why when a man is strong he is admired and when a woman is strong she is called strident."

The real legacy I suppose is in the way she is viewed by those who lived through the Thatcher years and saw how the country changed. Traditional 'Tories' didn't much care for her, new Conservatives loved her and the rest felt unloved and unwanted.

Thanks Paul...and don't get me wrong, I am perfectly happy to accept the 'wrongs'; I think I may have linked this to you before but I said as much this very month on a Cicero's Songs blog-post re mistakes etc.

Re Blair, he was the ultimate in classic "let-downs". Given the tsunami of good will and time-for-change and whiter than white and all the rest they could have done so much but instead Blair/Campbell/Mandy et al blew it big time.

Re 'stretching it', I don't think so, look at Kinnock and John Smith...I suspect it is more likely to have been the next Conservative admin "doing the Blair"

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